


Cloudy Skies With A Chance Of Death

by orphan_account



Series: Adventures of a Local Demon [1]
Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Friendship, No Romance, Sick Character, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, its cute i swear
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 01:00:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20986196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: “What do ‘ya mean you’re sick! You’re my partner in crime, Scarecrow! You were fine last night!”Lydia gets sick and Beetlejuice has to hang out with someone other than her. The Maitlands are surprised at how... not terrifying a demon can be.(an almost plotless one shot that I thought was cute! musical version of the characters!)





	Cloudy Skies With A Chance Of Death

**Author's Note:**

> maybe i'll make a series of oneshots... jk jk... UNLESS

“What do ‘ya mean you’re sick! You’re my partner in crime, Scarecrow! You were fine last night!”

Lydia groaned at the whiny rough voice that was her best friend/asshole uncle. 

“Beetlejuice, you know breathers get sick right?” 

“Of course I do,” the demon scoffed, “but I’ve never seen one get sick without the black cloud before!”

Lydia’s face contorted in confusion, and maybe stomach pain. “What is ‘the black cloud’?”

“Y’know! The black cloud! Smoke! Fog! Smells like an old egg?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Beetlejuice gasped. “You can’t see it?”

“No…?”

“Oh,” he sounded disappointed, “I just thought-”

Lydia went into a coughing fit and Beetlejuice backed up a bit. Natural breather stuff was not his forte, even something as small as coughing, he didn’t know what to do. Sure, he can cough, every demon can cough, but how to deal with someone else suffering from a cold in front of you is awkward for Beetlejuice. A lot of situations with breathers are awkward for someone who’s been dead their whole life. 

“What even is the black cloud?” she asked weakly after she was done coughing up her lung. 

“Hmm, I don’t know how to describe it…” Beetlejuice paused, then a real lightbulb popped into existence right over his head. It collided with his head and clattered to the ground, where he picked it up and shoved it into his coat pocket, never to be seen again.

“Oh! I know it’s… it’s like a parking ticket to death!”

Lydia gave him a small chuckle (that sounded almost like a cough). “How do you not know what a cold is, yet you know what a parking ticket is?” 

Beetlejuice stuck his tongue out at her and sighed. “I dunno, I used to spend a lot of time walking by roads, it’s a good place to get fresh newly-dead customers.”

_ That makes sense,  _ Lydia thought to herself. “So, elaborate on the parking ticket thing?” 

“‘Ya know how you get a parking ticket, and you know there’s no way for you not to pay it, but you’ve got some time to pay it, so you just groan and go on with it? Well, the cloud is like that, but instead of paying stupid money, you die.”

Lydia let this information sink in. “And you know this… how?”

Beetlejuice rolled his eyes, his attention span was probably up and he was tired of talking about this. “Baaaaaaabes, don't ‘ya get it? A black cloud means business! Clients! Good for me, bad for you. I thought since you can see me you’d be able to see it, but I was wrong,” He shrugged. 

Lydia took another pause and had a realization. “Wait… that’s how you met Ma- Barbara and Adam!”

Beetlejuice opened his mouth when another set of coughs racked the young girl's body. 

She groaned and turned over. “Ugh… maybe you should go Beej. Delia said I need to sleep…”

“Pssh! There’s Debra, always bein’ a pain in the nutsack!” 

Before Lydia could say anything, she heard a yowl and turned around, only to see the green/red-haired demon sitting on his ass on the floor, hands covering his private area. A floating dismembered hand that was curled up in a fist hovered a couple of feet in front of him. Beetlejuice growled at it and it disappeared in a cloud of smoke. 

“Asshole,” Beetlejuice mumbled, getting up, still wincing in pain. Lydia coughed out a snort. As amusing as her best friend's unstable supernatural powers were, her eyes still got heavier. 

“Alright, I’m gonna take a nap. Beej, why don’t you go bother the Maitlands?” Lydia suggested. 

Beetlejuice perked up and grinned. “Okay, but I’ll tell them you sent me~” 

“Whatever,” 

“Whatever!” Beetlejuice said, mocking her voice very accurately. Too accurately. Knowing him, he probably borrowed her voice.

Whatever, she was too sleepy to care. She heard him cackle and close the door softly.

She slowly drifted to a peaceful yet ugly sleep, having to breathe through her nose because of her sickness. 

* * *

The Maitlands were still after death, a bit boring. They’d gotten better, but being stuck in one house for what seems like an eternity doesn’t help.

(Beetlejuice just loved to tell them they were being dramatic about the “eternity” thing. 

“It’s only… what? 150 years stuck in a house?” He would scoff as if he weren’t more dramatic than the two ghosts, “Try a millennia or so. You’ll find ways to entertain yourself!”

The advice was weirdly encouraging coming from Beetlejuice, though if he knew the Maitlands thought that he’d take it back.)

Tonight Barbara was painting while Adam kept working on a miniature model version of the town. Everything was peaceful until a raspy voice came from behind Barbara. 

“What’cha doin’?”

Barbara jumped a bit and turned to give a polite smile to the green-haired corpse behind her. 

“Beetlejuice! I didn’t uh, see you there!”

The man gave her a sarcastic smile. “No one ever does Babs!”

She sighed and gestured to her painting. “I’m painting!” She said, acting positive yet weary… she never knew what Beetlejuice would pull.

The demon glanced at the canvas and hummed. 

“Wait…” he said, “those are your graves!” 

“Yep!” Adam exclaimed, brushing his hands off on his pants and standing up from his squat. “And Barb is doing such a great job with them!” Adam said this while scrunching his nose and smiling cutely at Barbara, who did the same thing back. 

Beetlejuice mocked throwing up and made gurgling noises. He turned his attention to the canvas once more and quirked his eyebrow.

“I thought you ghouls would paint something boring like sunsets or flowers. But this… I like this. You ain’t Picasso but hey! That guy was an asshole anyway. Never trust a guy who denies dead people’s portrait requests. Just plain disrespect.”

“You’ve met… Picasso?!” Barbara asked. 

“Yeah,” Beetlejuice laughed, “But I heard he’s not as bad as Michelangelo, now  _ that  _ guy was a prick!” 

The couple glanced at each other in surprise. Not because of the dead painter thing, it was just because Beetlejuice was acting so normal. He hadn’t called them sexy once, was he sick or something? Can dead people be sick?

“Hey! Hot-lands! Come back to earth!” Beetlejuice waved his hand in front of their faces to snap them out of their trance. 

“Jeez, did y’all go to Saturn? Sandworm caught your tongue?”

A small baby sandworm hung out of Beetlejuice’s mouth and he slapped it off of his tongue. He shoved it into his striped coat pocket, most likely to never be seen again. 

“No, we were just… thinking,” Barbara replied, only slightly fazed by the demon’s own pun lashing out at him.

“Ouch,”

The silence stretched for a second and Beetlejuice got fidgety. 

“Can I try?” he asked. 

Adam responded, “Try what?” 

“Y’know… painting!”

Barbara raised her eyebrows. “Sure… just choose a few colors.”

Beetlejuice proceeded to take black and green paint from Barbara’s small bin and brought it to a small canvas the ghostly woman had set up. 

Beetlejuice made a quick outfit change. He wore a striped t-shirt and black pants with an artist’s smock and a small hat on his head. A black, curled mustache came from his facial hair.

A couple of minutes passed. Barbara went back to her own painting while Adam went to prepare some tea for Lydia. 

Very suddenly, Beetlejuice exclaimed he was done with his painting, though he said it in a heavy french accent. 

“Look! Look!” he said. Barbara would’ve thought he was a child if it weren’t for his appearance. 

He was back in his normal striped suit, and he held out a half-dry canvas to Barbara’s face. The painting was a green happy face with angry eyebrows, with a big black blob above it. Sure, it had the artistic skill level of a kindergartener on heroin, but Beetlejuice looked so happy showing it to Barbara that she just had to smile.

“It’s lovely.”

Beetlejuice’s grin got bigger. “I can’t wait to show Lydia! She can finally see the black cloud!”

Barbara was going to ask what that was, but Beetlejuice had already left in a poof of smoke. A couple of minutes later, Adam came back to the attic to say that Beetlejuice and Lydia were giggling and talking downstairs. 

“Oh, Adam, don’t worry. I don’t think they’re plotting something today.”

“I hope so. I don’t want a repeat of the fireplace incident,” Adam said nervously. 

Barbara giggled. 

“No, I think our fireplace is safe today.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! Leave comments and kudos!


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